... While Optometrist Opts To `Smell The Roses'

"After 38 years and two wars, it's time to smell the roses," writes Dr. Stephen Blaschak of Allentown, who ended his career as an optometrist just before New Year's.

He estimates he's had more than 12,000 patients across those 38 years. He can't remember his first patient, but he says some patients in recent months remarked about coming to him for vision care 30-35 years.

He's had his office at one location, a row house at 733 N. 7th St.

"It's an ideal location," he says. "A lot of people walked to the office."

Some workers from Mack Trucks Inc., even after they moved to South Carolina, still included an eye checkup at his office when they returned for visits in the Lehigh Valley.

"It's crazy when you think how people hate to change doctors," he says.

In July, Blaschak sent out a letter to his "family of patients," advising of his impending retirement and introducing Dr. Jonathan K. Solan as his replacement.

Solan is agraduate of Pennsylvania State University and the Pennsylvania College of Optometry. He has been in practice in Montgomery County for eight years.

Blaschak's reference to "two wars" in his note is to his 28 combat missions as a navigator on B-17s in World War II in the Army Air Corps and on B-29s in the Korean War in the Air Force.

Blaschak, 67, is a lifelong resident of Allentown. As a youngster, he played piano in the Boys Haven Band. It was the Boys Haven organization, headed by Bob Redans, that paid for his first piano lessons -- which cost 50 cents a week.

A 1943 graduate of the then Allentown High School, Blaschak played piano in local dance bands with Henry Johns, Piff Moore, Paul Henry and Dick Porotsky.

He is a 1954 graduate of the Penn State College of Optometry, a former president of the Lehigh Valley Optometric Society and a lieutenant colonel retired from the Air Force after 30 years of active and reserve service.

He is married to the former Marianne Petrisky. He is the father of two sons -- Charles of Orange, Calif., and Stephen of Cocoa, Fla. -- and a daughter, Christine of Norristown. He has three grandchildren.